Proposal for a Lighthouse in the Form of a Banana Peel, for the Coast of New Zealand
Claes Oldenburg redefined the idea of the monument through enormous reproductions of commercial and quotidian objects that are at once whimsical, irreverent, and absurd. He moved to New York after college in 1956 and quickly became a prominent figure in Happenings and performance art, but his plaster sculptures shown in 1961 at The Store, a display in his studio that parodied American consumerism, launched him to fame as a leading artist associated with the emergent Pop movement. Later that decade, Oldenburg embarked on a series of Proposed Colossal Monuments, renderings in pencil or watercolor that transformed a familiar site or geographic location through a startling sculptural intervention.
A late drawing from this series by Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, the artist’s longtime collaborator and second wife, this sheet indicates a surrealist proposal for a lighthouse shaped like a banana peel, which fails as a functional object—a lighthouse that doesn’t illuminate. Its splayed form is more reminiscent of a wind turbine than a lighthouse, a possible recognition of contemporaneous debates around climate change.
A late drawing from this series by Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, the artist’s longtime collaborator and second wife, this sheet indicates a surrealist proposal for a lighthouse shaped like a banana peel, which fails as a functional object—a lighthouse that doesn’t illuminate. Its splayed form is more reminiscent of a wind turbine than a lighthouse, a possible recognition of contemporaneous debates around climate change.
Artwork Details
- Title: Proposal for a Lighthouse in the Form of a Banana Peel, for the Coast of New Zealand
- Artist: Claes Oldenburg (American (born Sweden), Stockholm 1929–2022 New York)
- Artist: Coosje van Bruggen (American (born The Netherlands) Groningen 1942–2009 Los Angeles, California)
- Date: 2001
- Medium: Watercolor, pastel, and graphite on paper
- Dimensions: 34 1/8 × 23 7/8 in. (86.7 × 60.6 cm)
- Classification: Works on Paper
- Credit Line: Gift of the Maria and Conrad Janis Estate, 2024
- Object Number: 2024.88.25
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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Claes Oldenburg
Coosje van Bruggen
2001
Multiple artists/makers
1975
Multiple artists/makers
1975
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1967
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1972
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